Rafsanjani denies power struggle in Iran

TEHRAN — Ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani denied there is a power struggle among Iran’s top hierarchy in the wake of last month’s disputed presidential poll, the Mehr news agency reported on Sunday.

Rafsanjani, 75, pointed to more than half a century of friendship between himself and Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 70, starting long before the 1979 Islamic revolution. “He is a progressive and forward-looking thinker in different subjects,” the former president said.

“The propaganda by the foreign media who try to suggest that there is a power struggle in the top level of the regime is unfair injustice to the Islamic revolution,” Rafsanjani was quoted as saying.